Abstract

Background

Due to the armed conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s many families escaped to other
countries. The main goal of this study was to explore in more detail the complexity
of various family members’ experiences and perceptions from their life before the
war, during the war and the escape, and during their new life in Sweden. There is
insufficient knowledge of refugee families’ perceptions, experiences and needs, and
especially of the complexity of family perspectives and family systems. This study
focused on three families from Bosnia and Herzegovina who came to Sweden and were
granted permanent residence permits. The families had at least one child between 5
and 12 years old.

Method

Family therapy sessions were videotaped and verbatim transcriptions were made. Nine
family therapy sessions were analysed using a qualitative method with directed content
analysis.

Results

Three main categories and ten subcategories were found - 1. Everyday life at home,
with two subcategories: The family, Work and School/preschool; 2. The influence of
war on everyday life, with three subcategories: The war, The escape, Reflections;
3. The new life, with five subcategories: Employment, Health, Relatives and friends,
Limited future, Transition to the new life.

Conclusions

Health care and social welfare professionals need to find out what kind of lives refugee
families have lived before coming to a new country, in order to determine individual
needs of support. In this study the families had lived ordinary lives in their country
of origin, and after experiencing a war situation they escaped to a new country and
started a new life. They had thoughts of a limited future but also hopes of getting
jobs and taking care of themselves and their families. When analysing each person’s
point of view one must seek an all-embracing picture of a family and its complexity
to tie together the family narrative. To offer refugee families meetings with family-oriented
professionals to provide the opportunity to create a family narrative is recommended
for the health and social welfare sector. Using this knowledge by emphasizing the
salutogenic perspectives facilitates support to refugee families and individuals.
This kind of support can help refugee families to adapt to a new system of society
and recapture a sense of coherence, including all three components that lead to coherence:
comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. More studies are needed to further
investigate the thoughts, experiences and needs of various refugee families and how
refugee receiving societies can give the most effective support.